The imagery shown here depicts both the output and the process taken for the second attempt at tattooing fake skin. The below image shows the marks to be tattooed being ‘free-handed’ by the founder, Bez, using a sharpie marker pen (a frequently used tool for work that is created without a stencil). The process of taping the fake skin described in previous posts was repeated, and the result can be seen in this image.

The symbols and marks drawn onto the fake skin where not chosen for aesthetic purposes, but for difficulty. Shapes such as the form of an ‘s’ and triangles/circles are thought to be difficult to tattoo perfectly. The purpose of inclusion of them on the fake skin was to learn how to approach such shapes and consider how the hand position may change, the positioning of the body while tattooing to adhere to a shape may adjust, and how to perform what looks like a continuous line of consistent depth without actually being executed in a single pass.

Bez creating shapes on fake skin for me to practice on

The image of the cat on the bottom right of the skin was applied using a stencil of a design created by studio artist Stacey Green, and was applied as there was space remaining on the fake skin that hadn’t been utilised. Similar to the previous fake skin practice, the purpose was to gain control of holding the machine and gaining understanding of how to hold a machine, the depth of penetration, and become more comfortable and familiar with tattooing and the procedure.As evident in the image, the pressure applied was too much in particular areas and has caused tears in the surface, however this is also due to the poor quality of the materials and not representative of actual skin. The image below shows the finished result of the exercise, with the fake skin being taken away from the ‘pound of flesh’ to reveal areas that had been accidentally made.

The end product of the second sheet of fake skin

​Adam McDade

Illustrator, Tattoo Apprentice, and PhD Research Student

​I had been told on numerous occasions that my apprenticeship was soon to accelerate by the studio founder, Bez. This was clarified the day that he ordered fake skin in for me to practice tattooing on.

Around this time, I was generously gifted an Ego tattoo machine from an artist at the Studio, Pete. Ego is the brand of tattoo machines created by Bez which are created ergonomically with different iterations to match the variety of styles of working for tattooists. The machine given to me at this point was one of the original Ego machines, which many of the artists working in the studio had never seen before. The knowledge of the machines rarity enriched it with a level of significance that made my possession of it seem particularly important to me.

To set up for tattooing of the fake skin, I was asked to take out one of the stencil exercises that I had produced previously and use it as a transfer. Bez selected a design by the artist Dan Hartley, which was a small devil holding a large capital letter ‘G’. The design was comically tacky, which added a level of light-heartedness to the exercise that seemed to reduce my anxiety to some extent.

To create a stencil normally, the design would normally be photocopied and placed in a treble layered sheet of transparent paper, carbon paper, and a yellow-toned paper that the design is placed on face-up. The three sheets with the design inside are then placed in a plastic wallet which is put through a thermal image transfer machine. The machine can be run at a variety of speeds, with the faster speeds producing the weakest stencil (more suited to smaller, delicate designs) and the slower speeds producing the strongest stencil (most suited to more bold and graphic designs).

Once the stencil has been put through the machine the trio of sheets is removed, and the top layer of translucent paper has an imprint of the design that was placed onto the bottom sheet. For this stencilling technique, the image was drawn manually however, as the exercise was already completed of creating a carbon copy. The procedure for hand stencilling is similar, however the design is simply placed onto the carbon paper and traced (firmly) with a ballpoint (or other hard nib) pen, with the reverse of the design then holding a carbon copy which can be applied to the skin, leaving a purple stencil as a map for the tattoo.

The fake skin is particularly thin and beige in colour, and can be compared to ‘Bernard Matthews wafer thin turkey ham’. Before applying a stencil, the skin had to be placed onto an object to hold it. Another artist in the studio was once sent a prosthetic arm to tattoo a design on (known as a ‘pound of flesh’), so the fake skin was wrapped around the fake arm, and taped with duct tape. The texture of the skin was repellent to any adhesive of the tape, so it proved difficult to secure the skin onto the arm.

Once the fake skin was on the arm, a small amount of stencil fluid was applied until tacky. The stencil fluid tends to be white in the bottle but transparent once applied to the skin, and acts as a means to hold the carbon copy onto the skin. The design was then applied, to the fake skin slowly, and peeled away from the corner to avoid any ‘smudging’. Once successfully applied, the design then had to be left for a few minutes to dry before any tattooing could begin. This was in order to avoid any smudging while tattooing. I was told at this point that this would generally be the point when the tattooist would go outside for a cigarette (though in my case, I just waited as I don’t smoke).

Despite there being no potential for any health hazards with the tattoo being applied to fake skin, I set up the booth as I would for a client. The bed and trolley where wrapped with cling film, and the machine and cable where bagged and protected accordingly. Ink caps filled with black ink where placed onto the cling film covering the trolley, which was adhered by petroleum jelly. The fake arm holding the skin was placed on the cling film protected bed, and the machine was switched on.

The first thing I noticed when holding the machine was the unfamiliar vibrating sensation, coupled with the unusually shaped instrument in my hand. There are two types of tattoo machines; the traditional coil machine, which is a heavy and loud, or the contemporary rotary machine, which is much lighter in weight and quieter in sound. While many tattooists have now opted for rotary machines, some more traditional artists have continued with coil machines, which seems to be down to personal preference. The Ego machine that I was holding was a rotary machine, which had a tube attached which had an attachment for a variety of needle cartridges. The piece I was to attempt was a thick-lined, traditional piece, and so the machine was set with a ‘9-liner’ (9 small needles grouped together).

With the supportive presence of a number of tattooists surrounding me, I attempted my first line into the design on the skin. The ink that was applied to the machine dispersed rapidly, obscuring the area I was tattooing, making it particularly difficult to see what I had tattooed. I was told this is something you get used to and intuitively understand in time. The fell of the vibrating weighted machine in my hand was so foreign that getting over the discomfort of that was a task alone, with utilising it to make marks with precision being a separately difficult task. The texture of the fake skin caused much of the stencil to disappear I was tattooing it.

As I tattooed, I was advised by Pete how to hold the machine so that I had one finger guiding the needle as it traced over the skin, allowing for a consistent depth. I was also advised to attempt to hold the machine upright to ensure a consistent line weight, and how to create a line that appears connected but may have been completed in multiple passes. This was done by continuing to line once the hand had been taken away from the skin in a position before the previous line had ended. I noticed the inaccuracies in the design, and so spent some time on the areas of skin around the stencil practicing line work. I was informed prior to the exercise that its purpose was merely in obtaining experience in holding the machine, and not in creating a visually pleasing tattoo. Having experimented with the line work, I realised how challenging it was to create a clean appearing tattoo and how many factors where to be considered to do it right. Unlike drawing and illustration, the canvas is human skin with totally different properties to paper, meaning stencils may disappear through wiping, the skin may get over-walked, and the canvas may move from the pain they are being inflicted. This exercise taught me how to both get used to holding a machine, as well as how to understand the logic of those responsible for bad tattoos.

The images included are of my first 2 attempts on fake skin – the first of which has been described above (and is likely visually apparent). The area around the imagery that is of a lighter colour is the part of the fake skin that has been covered by tape, with the darker areas being the parts where ink has been wiped off from the tattooed line and resulted in staining. The second sheet of skin was mainly as a means of the consideration of lines and gaining comfort with the machine again, and included motifs and images drawn by Bez for the purpose of the task (in addition to one of the flash designs for Friday the 13th created by the artist Stacey Green).

The fake skin practice is integral in the gaining of tacit knowledge that simply couldn’t be learned without empirical understanding. I am writing retrospectively and have since tattooed 3 more pieces of fake skin with increasing success – the pieces shown are artefacts of my very early stages of incompetence that I am now in the process of attempting to better. Tattooing practice is integral to the discipline and the reason it functions as a commercial art form, however there is so much more to the process than the act of doing. My time up until holding a machine has been focussed on gaining the necessary understanding of studio functioning that is a key part of the job. The use of a machine discussed here is the seminal moment of the next iteration of my career progression.

The first piece of fake skin - note the unfinished design due to the disappearing stencil, and cuts in the skin due to heavy handedness/poor quality surface.

Fake Skin sheet 2 - The heavy handedness was still present (as is apparent). The marks around the side where used to test how the fake skin might be utilised to protect areas of the skin in lazer tattoo removal.

​

​There are distinct differences in drawings that are created to exist only on paper, and those intended to work as a tattoo. My next steps of the apprenticeship clarified this difference, isolating the rationale behind them, while also giving me an opportunity to get used to drawing subject matter that is outside of my common illustration vernacular.

Perhaps the most common motif within pictorial tattooing is the skull, as a brief google search of the term ‘traditional tattoo’ will reveal. Skulls have been typical subject matter since the advent of western traditional tattooing, and can be seen in the portfolios of the majority of tattoo artists internationally. There are a multitude of speculations that could offer insight into the reasoning for the commonality of the presence of the skull, ranging from the symbolism it may present in acknowledgment and acceptance of mortality, links to ‘hyper-masculinity’, or an instinctive admiration of natural form. The skull is present in all taxonomies of tattooing from all cultures, (with the exception of pattern-orientated tribal).

Roses are perhaps the second most common tattoo motif in tattoo culture (particularly western tattooing), and are not uncommon to find in combination with a skull. Similarly, speculations for the popularity may be that they could symbolise life and vitality, and an aesthetically pleasing form of nature that adhere to a universally accepted, almost objective idea of beauty. The combination of the rose and the skull may be understood as reference to the fundamental truth that death is a consequence of life, and marking such an acknowledgment on the body may be an attempt to overcome the fear of this reality.

Irrespective of whatever the origins of such motifs popularity, their presence in the tattoo vernacular is apparent to anybody who has entered a tattoo studio. Given the gravitas assigned to such subject matter within the community, my next apprentice task was drawing tasks involving such forms.

I was first asked to draw a rose without any reference, so the artists at the studio would be able to understand the visual reference bank of my mind. They soon recognised that It was somewhat sparse, and opted to give me lesson in drawing ‘traditional tattoo’ roses, which are generally made up of 1 central oval (the bud) with five circles surrounding it (the petals). I initially struggled, but was advised by one of my many mentors, Dan Hartley, to keep my images inside an all-encompassing circle. This was in order to keep the shapes from going too far out of the border of the image, which would be a directly relevant skill for when it comes to tattooing at a designated size on a persons body.

I experimented for some time over a series of my days as an apprentice, until I moved on to rose drawings using reference from photographs, more in keeping with ‘neo-traditional’ or realism. I found that this way of working suited my natural way of processing external visual material into drawings, and the stylization of the rose wasn’t as dramatic and reductive as the traditional approach. Part of the difference between ‘drawing for tattoos’ and regular drawing is that lines needs to be more separated when being applied to tattoos, as over time they spread as the skin ages, which results in a loss of clarity of the design. This exercise was partly to understand those differences and apply them through drawings.

A similar approach was taken with imagery of skulls, however I was able to use reference from the beginning given the precision of anatomy that would be integral to the image looking correct. In order to attempt to create something that served both my interest and fulfil the purpose of the exercise, I opted to draw animal skulls, which although generic, has some slightly more interesting shapes than a human shape to consider. With the skulls, I began sketching in a way that is more in keeping with my illustrative style, as I recognised from completing the rose drawings that I was stronger when drawing in keeping with reference, and then reducing the elements down into more basic shapes that are more in keeping with the traditional tattoo aesthetic.

I continued exploring skulls, which where created by breaking down the reference imagery into shapes (primarily circles) which I then sketched onto the paper I was drawing onto, before picking out the central elements that I could convey. This process was completed with a mechanical pencil that was held towards the end of the instrument, to allow a more loose and free sketch, before bringing the grip closer to the end of the pencil in order to define the sketched area with a greater sense of control, once lines drawn from the sketches seemed appropriate to commit to.

Following from these observational exercises, I also attempted to combine a few of the studies into a singular image (roses, skulls, scrolls), with varying levels of success due to the shapes present and angles which the elements where drawn from. I additionally attempted to simplify the observational drawings by going over the sketches with tracing paper (a process very common in the creation of tattoo stencil creation post-sketch), picking out the integral elements of the image. This exercise was useful in getting out of my traditional methods used to create an illustration, while also practising how to draw with pace and efficiency in a format that would suit (or could be made to suit) multiple tattoo taxonomies.

Though the images shown are merely sketches, they also serve as documentation of cognitive process in interpreting information and trying to force it into adhering into a specific style (with little real success), before creating methods that organically allowed my approach to become more open, and thus acquire a greater diversity of skills. This exercise was just training in broadening my illustrative approach, and discovering methods of working that would suit potential client requests while also utilising my abilities in a way which would allow their natural expansion.

Preliminary exercises drawing roses

Examples of roses drawn in accordance more to 'realism' than traditional tattoo style.

Example of skull drawings produced once approach was beginning to become established

​Having completed my scroll exercise, my day to day tasks as an apprentice continued, including desk work and shadowing. During this period, I learned to feel comfortable in my environment through familiarity with procedures such as talking to customers about tattoo designs, assisting with customer/artist consultation, and booking the customer in on the calendar with a deposit.

These procedures have taught and continue to teach me what the possibilities are in tattooing in regards to cover-ups (tattooing over an existing tattoo design with something completely new), reworks (essentially, collaboration with other artists tend to be unaware they are part of a collaboration, and who have created a tattoo that is not of a suitable quality so requires a more accomplished artist to edit the piece), and matching client ideas to artists realisations, including any aesthetic negotiations that may be necessary to ensure the best piece possible. Part of desk work is a good understanding of artist to client suitability, and ensuring that what the client hopes for is possible by consultation with the artist. My understanding of what is possible independent of secondary input has naturally increased and assumingly will continue to do so – an essential skill for when I come to tattooing in the future.

A particular observation I had made while working on the desk was that often clients are rather vague on what it is that they would like to have tattooed, and may ask for examples of artwork to view and choose from – this perspective has its roots in traditional tattoo street shops but is not the procedure in custom tattoo shops in which each client is assured an original design. Some clients may request subject matter that conforms with current trends (e.g. Greek mythology, pocket watches, mandalas), and there are many requests for the names or portraits of loved ones.

While there is of course a place for such subject matter, my inclination is that the client may either want a tattoo that is simply executed well, while allocating them to a particular subculture or tribe to which they feel identified (often the tattoo may feel like an appropriate expansion of how the client has chosen to present their identity in regards to their appearance and demeanour), or that they hope to recognise the significance of another being to their personal identity using a method which is apparent, visible to all, and permanent.

If the design choices requested by clients can be categorised to such motivations, which through a brief and light discussion, I believe they can – then it may be fair to assume that there could perhaps be stronger methods of visually communicating such ideas than what has been requested.

Coming from a design background, my methods of working with a client have always been to understand what the client hopes to communicate in the imagery through discussion, and to formulate an output which manifests their vision. An integral part of the process in my own methods is in the realisation of what started as an abstraction set out in the brief. Most of the briefs have come about through organisations/companies that are well versed in art direction – in tattooing however, the client isn’t always necessarily of a creative mind-set. My belief is that tattooing is essentially another form of design, and part of being a strong designer is the non material process of creative problem solving, in addition to craftsmanship.

While tattooing has become increasingly visually impressive and the standards of craftsmanship continue to rise, works of a less creatively stimulating nature tends to just be honoured as part of the industry standard, and perhaps acts as the ‘bread and butter’ between more stimulating work for many artists. As previously stated, though this is a worthy and legitimate practice which will always have a place (some clients are set and happy with their ideas), it could also be possible that there are alternative ways to understand what it is that some of the clients are motivated by to get the tattoo and as a designer, to assist in fully realising their vision.

There are a host of methods to apply such thinking that may be applicable, but the core of the idea is to understand the client intent and offer something outside of what is commonplace and appears to be culturally normative. While my PhD research will be of a practice based nature, it is important to understand what formally conducted academic research into tattooing from a social sciences perspective has been conducted to combine with my empirical understanding of individual motivations for design choices, in order to offer any practical solutions to potential areas that may benefit from investigation.

At the time of writing (September 2017) one conceived potential method may simply be a more in depth client consultation than traditional (perhaps ‘conversation’ would be a more appropriate term). The actual tattooing process is very tactile and thus requires a lowering of defences and physical intimacy between both the tattooist and client. Spending a little more time discussing ideas with a client may introduce more of a participatory feel to the process, and thus increase the output of the tattoo, experience for those involved, and ultimately, the financial gain of the studio.

An example scenario may be that a 35-year-old father wants the name of his 6-year-old daughter tattooed onto his forearm in script. The request can be broken down to the stage before the idea has been formulated into abstract ideas, which might be that the client wants 1/ a tattoo to express his love for his daughter and 2/ an aesthetic of formality through what might be considered a conservative font. From these ideas and through conversation of the significance that his daughter made to his life, her personality, particular memories etc. ideas for visuals may then be generated. He may have a memory of being on holiday in Lanzarote where he was swimming in the sea and felt a strong connection to his daughter, and the design may be two sets of swim fins and snorkels emerging from splashing water, with a mountainous background indicative of volcanoes. Equally, the tattoo may well be in script, but it could be in the handwriting of his daughter, and above his heart – making it a more personal expression of the intimacy of their relationship.

Though the above example is of a very superficial and mind-to-screen example of potential implications of the application of design methodologies applied to tattooing, it serves as a starting point from which I am able to consider alternative ways of demonstrating my ideas better. As I continue my apprenticeship I hope to conduct some first hand data gathering of client requests and what imagery they show to communicate their desired visual style of tattooing, in order to better understand how I may conduct my practical research.

Beyond the Epidermis

​Adam McDade

A document of my experience working as an apprentice Tattoo Artist at Triplesix Studios, while also serving as a platform for my AHRC NPIF funded research as a PhD student at the University of Sunderland.